For 1989 team, Hall of a night in Walsh Gym

SOUTH ORANGE---P.J. Carlesimo went down the line, embracing his former players like long-lost sons. Then he stopped, bent down and offered a high-five to six-year-old Jordan Morton, the son of the guard who nearly shot the Seton Hall men’s basketball team to a national championship 25 years ago.

“He’s seen the Michigan game,” John Morton said of his son. “But he hasn’t watched the end---and he probably won’t.”

The end, of course, was a hard-to-believe foul call that enabled Michigan to beat the Hall by one point in the 1989 NCAA Tournament final. But in some ways that was the beginning for this group, whose legend has only grown in the quarter-century since. You’d be hard-pressed to find another runner-up so beloved.

“From ’89 until now I’ve met people from all over the world and I can tell you, it’s meant a lot to a lot of people,” Morton said.

On Wednesday, before a packed crowd in Walsh Gym, those Pirates were inducted into Seton Hall’s Hall of Fame---the first full team to achieve the distinction.

“You feel more pride than anything,” Carlesimo said. “It’s great that they’re recognizing the entire team. To be the first team to go in is really meaningful.”

Most of the squad was on hand, from the coaching staff to the managers. Three key players couldn’t make it---Andrew Gaze, Ramon Ramos and Gerald Greene. Others, like Daryll Walker, Pookey Wigington and Nick Katsikas, hadn’t set foot on campus in decades.

The memories ran deep.

When they got back to campus the day after the final, Carlesimo said, the place was mobbed with fans welcoming them home.

“That was one of the best nights,” he said. “It took a long time just to get (from the campus entrance) to the front of the gym.”

They received a hero’s welcome again Wednesday.

“To actually walk into the gym and see all this, I’m shocked that we have the turnout we have,” Jose Rebimbas said.

Why has this group touched a chord in people, then and now?

“Everyone now talks about the Spurs. We were kind of the Spurs back then---blue collar, played together, defended, shared the ball. We were a true team.” said former assistant coach Bruce Hamburger, now an assistant at Fairleigh Dickinson.

“We had no issues. It was just a team being together, playing ball and excelling,” said starting power forward Daryll Walker, who lives in upstate New York.

“We were good human beings, got along with everybody and had no ego,” said Rebimbas, now a successful head coach at William Paterson.

“It was really organic the way we played together, the way we grew together,” said forward Anthony Avent, who played a decade in the NBA and lives in Somerset.

They’ve gone down different paths. Forward Frantz Volcy is an engineer. Morton coaches at Fordham. Avent looks like he could still post up---the ever-fiery Wigington, donning a bowtie, was itching to go one-on-one with him right then and there. They were all introduced to thunderous applause.

Together again, now in the Hall of Fame, the 1989 Pirates still command a gym.

Lou LaForgia, a manager on that team, said it best.

“I grew up thinking you either had it or you didn’t,” LaForgia said. “They proved me wrong. They proved you could get it if you worked hard enough.”